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The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

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Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#121

Post by akira2501 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #42

> The Ultralight chip has a few features beyond a printed ticket, though. The chips are manufactured with a unique 7-byte identification code (UID). Moreover, the UID is signed, ensuring that fake UIDs cannot be generated. The problem is, they can be just as easily cloned . Your average Flipper Zero can do that. If you want actual security, you have to go for a challenge-response scheme - i.e. every card is provision…

> If you want actual security, you have to go for a challenge-response scheme

Sure you just have to accept that you're now vulnerable to Denial of Service attacks, or just DoS due to unrelated service infrastructure outages caused by things like backhoes.

> much less orient them consistently for the bond process to work?!

It's not all that consistent. They have a 3% failure rate. And you have to accept a unique map of "broken chips" with every single order you receive.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#122

Post by ForHackernews »

> a per-chip price of nine cents

That still seems expensive for a $3.75 metro fare.

2.4% of the cost of your ride is the chip in the ticket itself? Maybe it's worth it because it lets them eliminate mechanical ticket-reading and unify paper tickets with other NFC payment methods.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#123

Post by chgs »

Mifare is what’s been used in London’s Oyster cards for 20 years (not the ultralight ones mind), and Hong Kong for even longer.

However oyster really is in its way out for most uses. contactless and especially a phone is far more convenient for non season use, and far less wasteful.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#124

Post by akpa1 »

chgs wrote: post #123

Mifare is what’s been used in London’s Oyster cards for 20 years (not the ultralight ones mind), and Hong Kong for even longer. However oyster really is in its way out for most uses. contactless and especially a phone is far more convenient for non season use, and far less wasteful.

I'm looking forwards to the day they somehow manage to link a National Railcard to a contactless bank card.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#125

Post by chgs »

cypherpunks01 wrote: post #111
jeffbee wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I figured but you can't buy a charliecard online to load into your smartphone wallet, and I only needed it the once, and since it took more than an hour to get to Cambridge due to some combination of circus acts I used Blue bikes for the remainder of the day.

Ah yes, it's not quite there, but almost. Contactless payment directly at the turnstile is coming to Boston MBTA this year, I believe. Like how NYC works now, where you can just use your credit card for entry.

This is the London system we’ve had for a decade, it was licensed to other areas a few years ago.

I found myself in Paris having to cross the other day and forgot how terrible the old way of buying tickets was, amazed that it’s still the norm in so many cities

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#126

Post by ForHackernews »

mschuster91 wrote: post #84
chx wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's utterly not worth it. Your time to get it working, the equipment... but even if you have all of those if you get caught they will throw the book on you to scare away others. You can be charged by Unauthorized use of computer, Fraud and who knows what else. All of that to save four dollars on a ticket? When every station has cameras?

The thing is, you have to do it only once, and then the clones and knockoffs come. Like what, there's Tiktoks advising young dumbasses precisely what they need to steal and joyride cars.

> Like what, there's Tiktoks advising young dumbasses precisely what they need to steal and joyride cars.

Yeah, because cars are valuable and joyriding a stolen car is impressive and cool to lots of teens. Getting a free ride on the bus is like negative street cred.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#127

Post by justusthane »

hammock wrote: post #28
justusthane wrote: post #21

This is fascinating. We were just in Europe where we experienced these tickets for the first time. I had trouble with them; I was trying to figure out how to scan them because it never occurred to me that they might contain an NFC chip. My wife, on the other hand, who is not at all technical, took it for granted that you would tap them and immediately figured it out intuitively.

Where do you live? Chicago has had these contactless paper tickets since 2013

Thunder Bay, Ontario. Pop. 110k. We still have the sort of carnival-style paper tickets. I would guess that most smaller cities don’t have fancy NFC tickets.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#128

Post by michaelt »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #106
justusthane wrote: post #21

This is fascinating. We were just in Europe where we experienced these tickets for the first time. I had trouble with them; I was trying to figure out how to scan them because it never occurred to me that they might contain an NFC chip. My wife, on the other hand, who is not at all technical, took it for granted that you would tap them and immediately figured it out intuitively.

Does the card not have the three-arcs nfc symbol? Similar to the wifi symbol. To me the fake printed dip-chip is more confusing!

Most metro stations have a much simpler way for travellers to figure out what to do: of loads people who do know how it works, ahead of and beside you.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#129

Post by bobthepanda »

kens wrote: post #25
bobthepanda wrote: post #3

This wasn’t super obvious to me until later in the article but this is about the single use tickets. Neat stuff, though I can’t say I love the concept of e-waste NFC.

I don't like the e-waste aspect either, but realistically, the chip is so minuscule that the amount of waste is trivial compared to almost anything else you might discard. The chip is literally the size of a grain of salt. The other factor is that people who use tickets regularly would use the rechargeable plastic cards, rather than the disposable tickets, so the amount of waste is reduced.

I don’t really see why a chip is needed at all for single use tickets. Those have existed forever and there are a plethora of non-chip options ranging from the simple holepunch to the optical printed barcode or QR code.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#130

Post by hammock »

justusthane wrote: post #127
hammock wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you live? Chicago has had these contactless paper tickets since 2013

Thunder Bay, Ontario. Pop. 110k. We still have the sort of carnival-style paper tickets. I would guess that most smaller cities don’t have fancy NFC tickets.

I’m surprised you have a subway at all
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